The Poor Peoples Campaign rallies in Cleveland for better wages and a fairer economy – cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio The Poor Peoples Campaign continued its quest toward a mass June rally in Washington on Monday night by demonstrating in downtown Cleveland, part of a broader initiative of 10 rallies aimed on publicizing its agenda.

The rally, organized by local advocates and national co-chairs Bishop William Barber and the Rev. Liz Theoharris led demonstrators from U.S. Bank Plaza to Trinity Cathedral, where they held the rally to focus on the struggles and policy needs of the impoverished and low-wage workers.

In an interview, Barber said the goal was to set about a third reconstruction for the American public the first reconstruction being the reset of the country during the end of slavery and the second during the 1950s and 1960s during the Civil Rights movement.

We live in a country that, to this day, has not raised the minimum wage in over nine years. And we know a living minimum wage would be well over $15 an hour, Barber said. We also deal with ecological devastation. Eighty-seven million people in this country prior to COVID were either uninsured or underinsured. We have a war economy. A national budget of over $700 billion for the war economy and $700 billion for everything else.

Barber said Ohio was indicative of the challenges poor people face across the nation, including voter suppression and politicians both Democrat and Republican who refuse to address wages.

Its tragic that in Ohio a person has to work 74 hours at a minimum wage job -- 74 hours a week -- just to afford a basic two-bedroom apartment, he said.

Read the original post:

The Poor Peoples Campaign rallies in Cleveland for better wages and a fairer economy - cleveland.com